The Ninth Science Fiction Megapack

by Arthur C. Clarke

  “I am happy.”

  “But I mean—happier.”

  “Very happy?”

  “That’s right, darling. When you love, you are very happy.”

  “I am very happy. Am I in love?”

  A wave of discouragement sought to engulf him, but he persisted stubbornly.

  “Do you know what this is?” he asked her, and then he kissed her gently while his arms ached to hold her.

  She did not resist or respond, but he felt a slight tremor pass through her. Her eyes were wide, puzzled.

  “Kiss?” she said.

  “Kiss of love,” he corrected. “Makes us both very happy. I love you, Lylwani. Do you love me?”

  “Kiss,” she said, raising her lips to his.

  Nad swept her into his arms and kissed her as he had wanted to kiss her ever since they had left the ark, and she responded happily.

  “You’re mine, Lylwani! Mine!” he whispered.

  “Mine,” she answered, and her arms stole around his neck. “I am very happy.”

  * * * *

  When Nad next looked up, something bothered him that he could not define. He started to turn back to Lylwani, but his attention was dragged back again to something—something that was not as it should be.

  Then he saw, through the observation panel, several dim glimmerings of violet light. Lylwani felt his body tense and she arose from his arms.

  “What is wrong?” she asked.

  Now Nad’s cup was overflowing. A fierce, glad joy suffused him. “Look!” he cried, pointing at the lights. “The stars, Lylwani! The stars!”

  “Stars?” She looked up in puzzlement at the lights. “I see lights—pretty lights.”

  “Oh don’t worry about what they are sweetheart!” he exclaimed. “They just make me very happy.”

  She frowned. “Happy? Do you love the stars?”

  “I could kiss them!

  “I don’t understand,” she said. “Everything is love and kisses.”

  Nad laughed and hugged her. “Come on!” he said. “Let’s wake up the others and show them the stars!” Yiddir and Karg came rushing forward when he called them, but Ron did not respond and they left him alone.

  “Yes, there they are at last!” cried Yiddir, his old face flushed with the emotion of relief.

  “Is that all they amount to?” queried Karg disappointedly. “I can see only about ten violet points of light.”

  “No!” Yiddir laughed. “You see only the beginning of them. We have to slow down still more. We see only a few that are moving away from us, and their light waves are still reaching us at such a high frequency that we can only discern the highest visible band of their spectra. That is the so-called Doppler effect. In a few hours you will see the blazing glory of God’s whole universe!

  “This is a very happy occasion,” said Karg.

  “Are you happy?” Lylwani asked him.

  “Yes,” Karg answered. “Very happy.”

  To everyone’s intense surprise, Lylwani kissed him. “The kiss of love will make you happier,” she explained.

  Karg blushed crimson and looked at Nad, who was utterly crestfallen. But the Martian’s sense of humor saved the situation as he admonished Nad with mock severity.

  “Teacher,” he said, “you’ll have to make your lessons more explicit!”

  It was Nad’s turn to blush. Both Yiddir and Karg patted him on the back with silent eloquence. They understood his problem.

  “As soon as visibility has been completely established,” Yiddir announced, in an effort to change the subjects “we’re going to have a lot of work to do. I’ve got to locate definitely the solar system where our little planet is. It will be several weeks yet before we will be stationary and can start acceleration back toward our goal. Our trip to the planet will have to be made as much as possible within the speed of light, so it may take us a long time to reach it. Just how long I’ll have to determine. If it is too many light years distant we’ll have to plunge again into the velocity of darkness, but I hope not.”

  Yiddir thought of Ron. He reasoned that if Ron was mentally incapable of evaluating their present position it could be a blessing. For otherwise his first thought must be, as was Yiddir’s: Poor Yldra died before she got to see the stars…

  * * * *

  True to Yiddir’s prediction, within a few hours the majority of the stars shifted into full spectrum visibility and shone with their natural light, at least to an effective extent. There was a slight tendency for the stars ahead to be predominantly blue-white and the ones astern to be predominantly yellow-white or even dull red, but Yiddir promised that within a week or so everything would be absolutely normal.

  As the flaming universe took form before their eyes, they felt a great oppressiveness lift from them. Their spirits found room for expansion and life took on new values.

  Ahead of them, in the direction of their goal, was a tremendous spectacle that none of them would ever forget. Towering in awe-inspiring grandeur among the great, blazing tiers and banks of stars was an opaque mass of gas that Yiddir said was hundreds of millions of kilometers in extent. He called it a nebula.

  “Our little planet lies close beside it,” he said, and he showed them a yellowish sun in the telescope that was the center of the system they sought. “The outer fringe of the dark nebula is at about the same distance as our planet,” he explained. “It is about three light years away, so I am afraid we’ll have to make a large part of our journey in the darkness of higher velocity, but it will be necessary to watch our course and not get too close to the nebula.”

  “Why?” asked Karg, who was at the telescope.

  A shadow of concern crossed momentarily over Yiddir’s wrinkled brow. “I became informed, some time ago, of certain unaccountable phenomena connected with that region,” he said. “Exploration reports are on file in the ark we have left, and I found the opportunity to peruse some of them secretly. At the time the rebel Navigators visited the little world we are seeking, several of the scout boats, such as this one, made excursions to the nebula itself, to gather samples of the gas for analysis. Their pilots and accompanying observers returned with accounts of strange physical phenomena occurring within the nebula. There were planes of strong gravitational currents separated by regions of no attraction whatsoever. One of the ships was almost lost in a powerful eddy for which they had no name but which I would call a space warp. My only theory on this subject is that the nebula is so huge and its gasses so dense that various regions of superior density have enough concentrated mass to set up strong gravitational fields. As these masses exert pressure, expand, contract or attract each other they cause motion, as well, and probably a very complicated series of orbits is set up for multitudinous masses of gas, which change and change again. The result is that probably all the freak laws of Nature occur there, and it would be dangerous for a ship to go too near to the nebula or to attempt to pass through it. That’s why I want as much visual flight as I can get enroute to the planet, because in the darkness of super velocity I could go off course and end up too close to that dark colossus.”

  Karg had been wandering among the star clusters with the telescope as Yiddir spoke. Now he turned and asked a question that brought Nad sharply to attention.

  “Yiddir,” he said, “I was present when you first contacted us by sonophone, and I remember you told us that Man had a magnificent purpose to accomplish in the living flesh. You said this purpose had been hidden from us by the Navigators who had robbed us of memory, and that you could not reveal it to us until we had learned many more facts. Is it the proper time now to ask you what that purpose is?”

  At this point, Yiddir, alone, noticed that Ron focused his eyes on him, and that there glimmered in him the faintest spark of interest for the first time since Yldra’s death.

  “The answer to your question,” he said, “is a very vital one, but also the most problematical one that may be asked. I can’t answer you in one neat sentence. In fact, it may ta
ke me days, months, or even years to get the idea across to you, but if you’ll be patient I’ll start.”

  He then began to approach the subject of Man’s duality, amazing them all with the concept of life beyond the flesh.

  “Centuries and millennia ago, all this was so incomprehensible,” he continued, “that it was discussed on the basis of a blind and trusting faith. As science developed in its constant search for the truth, certain things could not very readily be reconciled with the old religious ideas and they were regarded merely as parables disguising, for a more ignorant mass of people, the real truths that science was after. So atheism developed, unfortunately, and Man retrogressed through rank materialism almost to the brink of sheer animalism, until the scientists, still valiantly searching, finally found the road to a seeing and a knowing faith in Man’s duality, by proving it, and by basing the new approach to godliness on the proof that nothing was supernatural—that even the next plane of existence was as physical as this. The discovery of sub-matter and second order phenomena led to the actual detection and even, in some cases, photographs, of Man’s sub-material self. Just as in the flesh we are formed in embryo and born into the corporeal plane of existence, so the sub-material, or ethereal Man, or spirit, as it was once called, is embryonic within the living human, until our grosser body disintegrates and releases the final entity of Man into the sub-material world which was once called Heaven, or the Hereafter, but which we know now is merely a vast universe composed of a finer matter.”

  “But the purpose of our present existence—what is that? asked Nad.

  Yiddir smiled. “I could talk for years,” he said, “but to make a long story short and go into the details later, I will tell you that there is one fundamental law behind all things, and failure to adhere to that law leads to disruption and unhappiness. That law says that there are two opposite forces—which may be called anything you like—active and passive, positive and negative, good and bad, construction and destruction. No matter where you look you find its manifestation: love and hate, man and woman, peace and war, happiness and despair. All is surge or vibration between these opposites. Without surge and striving between these extremes there would be no energy, hence no matter, or space, or time, or existence. And as Man is finite, so by this law may we positively deduce the Infinite, Man called God; not an arbitrary entity sitting somewhere on an ethereal throne, but the Incomprehensible Total of all sub-material energy, of which we are part and contributors.”

  “But still I don’t see the great purpose of life,” protested Karg.

  “That purpose,” said Yiddir, “is expansion, surge, or striving toward godliness, from finite to Infinite! No civilization that defies this principle of Natural Law can progress or stabilize itself at all!”

  “But how can we progress toward this godliness?” asked Nad.

  “We are doing it now,” said Yiddir. “In our self-denial and sacrifice to safeguard a potential future generation which must spring from you and Lylwani, we have advanced just that much out of our finite selves. Concentration upon self, alone, is merely a process of densifying and becoming infinitesimal even to the point of spiritual extinction.”

  At this point, Ron buried his face in his hands. And Yiddir knew, at last, that he had driven his point home.

  CHAPTER X

  It required another week finally to eliminate their forward velocity. Yiddir handled the controls so expertly that they were without induced gravity for only a few seconds. Then acceleration took the place of deceleration and they were on their way at last toward their distant goal.

  In the meantime, Yiddir and Karg both took note of Nad’s frequent use of the telescope. Instead of the expression of awe and wonderment that was always to be seen in Karg’s face when he used the instrument, Nad’s face reflected nothing but cold, grim determination. For hours, his narrowed, gray eyes searched the limitless vastness, and the other men knew he was not looking for new stars. At other times he watched the meteor detector, continually adjusting it for ultra-sensitivity, and yet they knew he was not trying to detect meteors. Then when the detection system failed momentarily owing to the intermittent short caused by the galactite, he would rush to the telescope and begin his vigil all over again.

  Or at other times, Nad would try to be alone with Lylwani, awakening her personality slowly and painstakingly to a more complete awareness of their situation. At last she was completely rational, requiring only the continued process of education and training to bring her back to her former self.

  Ron, too, showed some slow signs of progress, although he was still inarticulate. Sometimes Yiddir found him, too, at the telescope, and he reflected that curiosity was a sign of convalescence. He was even able to interest Ron in further training concerning space navigation.

  Karg was all around handy man and dependable standby. He took complete charge of the converters and synthesized their food and water. Or at other times he would entertain them with his Martian querla, while Lylwani sang the songs he had taught her. Yiddir would sit silently meditating on the precarious future of a race of human beings that must originate from Nad and Lylwani—whom he considered in his mind as Adam and Eve.

  * * * *

  Such was their state of affairs when ultra-velocity was approaching again and Yiddir prepared to hurl them into the darkness that lies beyond the speed of light. They were two and a half light years from their goal.

  As the stars began to fade slowly from view, Nad suddenly demanded a decrease of speed, for the sake of visibility. He had been at the telescope several hours.

  “What’s the matter?” Yiddir asked him, and Karg and Lylwani crowded close to see.

  Nad’s eye was at the eyepiece and he was silent for almost a minute.

  “I lost it,” he said finally.

  “Lost what?” Karg asked him.

  Nad straightened up, his face slightly drawn with fatigue, and he brushed a mop of blond hair back from his forehead. “It might have been a meteor,” he said, “and yet its velocity seemed to be too great.”

  Yiddir’s eyes narrowed. “In which direction was it traveling?”

  Nad answered his look, significantly. “It was moving parallel to us and at about the same speed.”

  “How far away?”

  Nad shrugged. “Who can tell? The detectors can’t pick it up.”

  Karg addressed both Yiddir and Nad. “You think it could be—”

  “Sargon?” said Nad. “I don’t know.”

  “Who is Sargon?” asked Lylwani.

  Nad looked at her with deep affection. He put his arm around her and drew her close to him. “I hope you never find out,” he said.

  That day their little ship hurled into the great darkness—an infinitesimal mote dwarfed into virtual nothingness by the towering enigma of the dark nebula.

  * * * *

  Nad could not sleep. He lay in his bunk wide awake and tried to remember how long they had been traveling in the darkness of super velocity. Days? Weeks? Such units of time were almost without meaning in this terrible endlessness, and there was a year or a year and a half to go. Sometimes he had felt that the whole structure of his personality was going to slump suddenly into a shapeless puddle, because all the reasons which formed the props under his mental stability were but arbitrary synthesis, like the food that came out of the converters. But in such precarious moments he supported himself on two pillars of reality: his love for Lylwani and his hatred and suspicion of Sargon.

  Against his fear that Sargon might really be out there trailing them swiftly through the darkness was balanced by the grim hope that he was there—that someday they would meet again and that he could rid himself of his bitterness by throttling his enemy forever.

  Abandoning his attempt to rest, he finally got up and went forward to keep Karg company in the control room. When he arrived, however, he found the room empty. He looked at the instruments and found them steady. However, the pilot light over the meteor indicator was out again, as it had
been of late with dangerous frequency.

  Reasoning that Karg had gone to the observation bridge aft, he sat down idly at Yiddir’s chart desk and puzzled over the star charts. Then he got up again and paced the room, a frown creasing his brow. Why was he so nervous? He tried to analyze himself. It was not just boredom. What was it?

  Then he stopped dead still, eyes slowly widening with nameless apprehension. What was wrong?

  The whole ship was too silent. He was accustomed to stillness out here in the void, but this was an absence of sound that pricked up the ears of instinct.

  Swiftly, he went aft to look for Karg. The rear observation chamber was empty. He went to Yiddir’s cabin and found him unconscious in his bunk, but as he shook him Yiddir slowly came to.

  “I can’t sleep,” Yiddir mumbled, “been awake for hours.”

  “But you were unconscious!” said Nad. “You look like you’ve been knocked out. No color in your face at all!”

  “You’re rather pale, yourself,” Yiddir replied, looking up at him curiously.

  “Yiddir, something is wrong. I can’t find Karg anywhere!”

  The old man got up and accompanied Nad on a hasty tour of inspection. At last they found Karg. He was lying on the floor before the main hatch airlock, face down, a Disruptor clutched in one band. His black hair was matted with blood.

  Silently, both men bent over him and made a quick examination. With a frenzied effort, Nad turned his friend over to look at his face. Yiddir lifted one of Karg’s eyelids.

  “He is dead,” he commented. “Someone Stun Rayed him and then hit him over the head. Nad,” he said, looking up gravely, “you and I were Stun Rayed while we slept.”

  Nad rose slowly, gathering a great breath into his lungs. Then he shouted, “Lylwani!” And he ran toward her cabin before Yiddir could advise him that her absence from the ship was the only possible deduction.

  Weighted down by an awareness of ultimate tragedy, he sought the control room. The darkened pilot light over the meteor indicator confirmed his worst suspicions.